How a punk-rocking paralegal harnessed employee power to green Microsoft
Struggling to find a sustainability job? Well, good news. You don’t have to find one…you can MAKE one. Drew Wilkinson was a punk rocker and eco-pirate when he landed a job as a paralegal at Microsoft. He felt like a fish out of water in the corporate tech world, but instead of changing his DIY-contrarian tune, Drew leaned in. Though “sustainability” wasn’t in his job description, Drew co-founded a powerful employee sustainability community. It would grow to the thousands, stretch across the globe, and push Microsoft to use their billions to do better for the planet. In the first episode of Degrees Season 6: How to Green Your Job, Drew’s story is a top-notch lesson in forging your way into a planet-saving career. He took what he already knew how to do — disrupt a system, innovate solutions, and organize folks around him — and applied it to greening his workplace. Now, he’s taking his climate solutions work outside the walls of Microsoft and working independently to help organizations become more sustainable through employee-led solutions, and make sustainability part of everybody’s job.
Degrees: Real talk about planet-saving careers · Yesh Pavlik Slenk, Drew Wilkinson
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Show Notes
Drew Wilkinson is a climate activist and co-founder of Microsoft’s 10,000-member employee sustainability community, which has pushed the company to protect natural resources and operate with more sustainable practices. Now, as founder of Climate Leadership Collective, he helps organizations on the people side of sustainability: employee engagement, culture and change management, community building, green skilling, and leadership development. His mission is to make sustainability part of everybody’s job.
Resources from this episode:
- Check out recent reports on sustainability job growth:
- Check out Drew’s website to learn more about his consulting work with Climate Leadership Collective. Learn about his punk rock, sea pirate, and DIY background.
- Read Drew’s blog on how to Make Sustainability Part of Everybody's Job.
- Learn more about Microsoft’s Sustainability Connected Community:
- Read Drew’s article on How to Build Your Own Employee Sustainability Community.
- Listen to Powered by the People, a Microsoft podcast that tells the community’s origin story.
- Watch Climate at Work’s panel about building grassroots sustainability movements within companies, featuring Sustainability Connected at Microsoft and Anthroprocene at Google.
- Check out how Drew used the Microsoft Hackathon to help clean up the ocean.
- Listen to the music of Drew’s hardcore punk band, Run with the Hunted, and the song you heard in this episode, Destroy All Calendars.
If you liked this episode, you’ll love these related Degrees episodes:
- How to green any job with Project Drawdown's Jamie Beck Alexander
- How Heather McTeer Toney is redefining climate action for the next generation of leaders
- The fastest electric vehicle fleet makeover in the west
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Degrees: Real talk about planet-saving careers is presented by Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). Yesh Pavlik Slenk is our host. Amy Morse is EDF’s producer. Podcast Allies is our production company. Tressa Versteeg produced this episode. Mia Lobel is our story editor. Ayo Oti is our researcher and Audrey Nelson provided fact checking. Engineering by Kevin Kline. Editing assistance on this episode from executive producer Elaine Appleton Grant. Our music is Shame, Shame, Shame from Yesh’s favorite band, Lake Street Dive.
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